Philippines completes resupply at Second Thomas Shoal

THE PHILIPPINE military on Wednesday said it had completed a routine resupply mission to its marooned naval ship at Second Thomas Shoal, a hotly contested maritime feature in the South China Sea where the Philippines and China had clashed.

The Armed Forces of the Philippines carried out its routine troop rotation and resupply mission to its beached vessel alongside the coast guard “without any untoward incident,” it said in a statement.

A handful of Filipino marines are stationed on the BRP Sierra Madre, a World War II-era warship that Manila grounded at the shoal in 1999 to assert its sovereignty.

Philippine forces conduct resupply missions about every two months to rotate stationed troops and bring in provisions. China had in the past tried to block Philippine ships from resupplying BRP Sierra Madre before Manila and Beijing agreed on a “provisional agreement” to de-escalate tensions in July last year.

The Philippines and China have been at loggerheads over disputed features in the South China Sea, which Beijing claims almost in its entirety. A United Nations-backed tribunal based in The Hague in 2016 voided China’s claim for being illegal. — Kenneth Christiane L. Basilio